Guest post by David Middleton
From Bloomberg…
The number of U.S. jobs in solar energy overtook those in oil and natural gas extraction for the first time last year, helping drive a global surge in employment in the clean-energy business as fossil-fuel companies faltered.
Employment in the U.S. solar business grew 12 times faster than overall job creation, the International Renewable Energy Agency said in a report on Wednesday. About 8.1 million people worldwide had jobs in the clean energy in 2015, up from 7.7 million in 2014, according to the industry group based in Abu Dhabi.
[…]
Why is this newsworthy? Energy production is not a jobs program. The fact it takes more people to provide for 1% of our energy consumption than it takes to provide for 52% (67% if imported oil is included) is not a positive aspect of solar power.
The following charts are calibrated in “millions of tonnes of oil equivalent” (MTOE). The data are from the Bloomberg article, BP Statistical Review of World Energy June 2015 and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
What’s that? You can’t see the Oil & Gas bar on the chart? I can fix that.
I am using 2014 because that is the most recent year for which I had comprehensive data. It was also the peak employment year for the oil and gas industry (~200,000 employees vs ~165,000 solar employees). Since 2014, U.S. oil & gas employment has declined; however our total oil & gas production continued to climb…
The fact that the United States leads the world in oil & gas production is a bit more significant than the fact that the typical solar industry worker is less than 1% as productive as the typical oil & gas employee.
Data Sources
BP Statistical Review of World Energy June 2015
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
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So from an opportunity cost vantage point, 99% of the working day in the solar energy industry generates nothing. It’s an unemployment support scheme.
After all, of the 1000 jähriges Reich there’s already 70 years done.
a yes Arnie if your’e still on that environmental climate trip – here’s the
https://www.google.at/search?q=conan+the+barbarian+hyperborea+glaciation&oq=conan&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j35i39l2j0.9436j0j4&client=ms-android-samsung&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8
Seavas.
I am a farmer and I have a great idea. Let’s hire 100,000 people to pick corn by hand. Think of the diesel fuel we would save and all the employment created! Using more green inefficient energy will lower our standard of living, but it is all worth it so we can keep the oceans from rising maybe a mm or 2. I better stop or the DOJ will be after me.
I always found it bizarre that having to hire 100 times more people to produce the same amount of energy is a point of pride, rather than a concern.
Pretty much the same people also believe that by forcing people to pay more for products that are made here, vs somewhere else, will improve the economy.
What they fail to realize is that everyone who is now paying more, now has less money to spend on other things.
Additionally, such a move makes all of our exports more expensive.
Which is why you have to force Americans to buy more expensive American-made, union-label products. Socialism and populist protectionism are two sides of the same counterfeit coin.
I’m pretty certain there are more shovel operators employed than backhoe operators …
It’s the equivalent of hiring a hundred farmhands to milk one cow. 😐
I’m just wondering, as a skeptic who checks on things, if David Middleton is the David Middleton of Twin Butte Energy, Ltd. from Alberta Canada who shows up in top results of a simple search.
http://www.twinbutteenergy.com/management.html
There were no credentials provided, so I was worried that an employment article that didn’t even mention all the jobs in wind energy might be biased – since this guy just focuses on the more-costly solar, while wind energy is booming in the Plains States – and jobs are there and in the manufacturing sites around the country..
http://www.bls.gov/green/wind_energy/
I am not that David Middleton. The Bloomberg article focussed on solar. My post focussed on the nonsensical Bloomberg article.
Wind works OK where it works. Utility scale solar sort of kind of almost works in very few places.
Coal works everywhere. Natural gas works wherever you can build pipelines. Nuclear works everywhere that people aren’t stupid.
I don’t work in the solar, wind, coal or nuclear industries. I do consume electricity and I like paying less than $0.12/kWh.
I like paying less, too, though I spend far less for electricity than for data plans. I’m buying my electricity from a wind-power source and paying $0.099 per kWh here in Chicago. So wind is cheap.
And while gas prices dropped here in the US due to fracking, solar prices have continued to drop worldwide, as the solar cell technologies continue being improved constantly, economics of scale are working, and as deployment prices drop, too.
Drop to the point where big projects for utility-scale solar are coming in under 10 cents/kWh. Like 3 cents in Dubai, without subsidy. Like 7 cents, including 2 cent Federal subsidy, in Austin Texas.
http://vae.ahk.de/marktinformationen/detail/artikel/dubai-shatters-solar-price-records-worldwide/?cHash=fbec3c5401ed4e8aef0c29d24724fc7c
I’d pay more for my electricity, because the add-on costs of coal are very expensive. Natural gas is inexpensive, but it sure was difficult supplying enough in the Northeast during that very cold winter a couple years ago, and the price of electricity from gas peaker plants is very high, too.
And you ignore the need to reduce greenhouse emissions.
But your point about “if you can build a pipeline, natural gas works” is equally correct for utility-scale renewables. HVDC transmission lines connecting the three US grids, and connecting population centers with remote generation will do much to smooth the small-scale fluctuations of individual wind farms or locally cloudy solar farms.
Aggregated renewables will also help the utilities wean themselves from a lot of those natural gas peaker plants by smoothing peak demand, or by shifting western midday solar towards the east during their evening peak.
And of course, rooftop or distribution-level solar helps to keep power on while transmission lines are down – local resilience gets a lot more focus after Sandy.
I wouldn’t expect a snarky comment from a moderator (see below). Yes, I produce more than 100% of my electricity needs with my solar panels.
RWturner I do put my money where my mouth is. I own an electric car and I have installed solar panels that cover all of my electricity usage.
[All? .mod]
[“see below”? Right now point your comment is the last one. -another mod]
The previous moderators comment is embedded in my comment. Is says [All? .mod].
“Luke May 28, 2016 at 12:17 pm
RWturner I do put my money where my mouth is. I own an electric car and I have installed solar panels that cover all of my electricity usage.”
Even the telecoms etc and web servers across the internet as well? You must have one hell of a system installed to produce more than you need.